World War I

A Tiny Part Of History

Shortly before the war, British General Horace Smith-Dorrien predicted a catastrophic war which should be avoided at almost any cost.

World War I, was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter.

It was a major war centred in Europe that began on the 28th July 1914, and lasted until the 11th November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Central Powers originally centred around the Triple Alliance.

More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of great technological advances in firepower without corresponding advances in mobility.

It was the sixth deadliest conflict in world history. Which was a war that began with an assassination and ended with a series of revolutions, involving multiple countries.

The assassination on 28th June 1914, of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. This was the proximate trigger of the war.

Long-term causes, such as imperialistic foreign policies of the great powers of Europe, including the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, France, and Italy also played a major role.

Ferdinand's assassination by a Yugoslav nationalist resulted in a Habsburg ultimatum against the Kingdom of Serbia. Several alliances formed over the past decades were invoked, so within weeks the major powers were at war; via their colonies, the conflict soon spread around the world.

Four Imperial Powers Crushed

On 28th July 1914, the conflict opened with the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia, followed by the German invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg and France; and a Russian attack against Germany.

After the German march on Paris was brought to a halt, the Western Front settled into a static battle of attrition with a trench line that had changed little until 1917.

In the East, the Russian army successfully fought against the Austro-Hungarian forces but was forced back by the German army. Additional fronts opened after the Ottoman Empire joined the war in 1914, Italy and Bulgaria in 1915 and Romania in 1916.

The Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, and Russia left the war after the October Revolution later that year. After a 1918, German offensive along the western front, United States forces entered the trenches and the Allies drove back the German armies in a series of successful offensives.

Germany, which had its own trouble with revolutionaries at this point, agreed to a cease-fire at 11:00 hours on the 11th November 1918, later known as Armistice Day.

By the war's end, four major imperial powers—the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires—had been militarily and politically defeated and ceased to exist.

The successor states of the former two lost a great amount of territory, while the latter two were dismantled entirely. The map of central Europe was redrawn into several smaller states. The League of Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict.

The European nationalism spawned by the war and the breakup of empires, the repercussions of Germany's defeat and problems with the Treaty of Versailles are generally agreed to be factors in the beginning of the next; World War II.

Trench Warfare

Military tactics before World War I, had failed to keep pace with advances in technology. These advances allowed for impressive defensive systems, which the out-of-date military tactics could not break through for most of the war.

Barbed wire was a significant hindrance to massed infantry advances. Artillery, vastly more lethal than in the 1870s, coupled with machine guns, made crossing open ground extremely difficult.

The Germans introduced poison gas; it soon became used by both sides, though it never proved decisive in winning any battles. Its effects were brutal, causing slow and painful death, and poison gas became one of the most-feared and best-remembered horrors of the war.

Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties. In time, however, technology began to produce new offensive weapons, such as the tank. Britain and France were its primary users; the Germans employed captured Allied tanks and small numbers of their own design.

After the First Battle of the Marne, both Anglo-French and German forces began a series of outflanking manoeuvres, in the so-called "Race to the Sea". Britain and France soon found themselves facing entrenched German forces all along from Lorraine to Belgium's coast.

Britain and France sought to take the offensive, while Germany defended the occupied territories; consequently, the German trenches were much better constructed than those of their enemy.

The Anglo-French trenches, were only intended to be "temporary" before their forces broke through German defences. Both sides tried to break the stalemate using scientific and technological advances.

On the 22nd April 1915, at the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans violating the Hague Convention, used chlorine gas for the first time on the Western Front. Algerian troops retreated when gassed and a six-kilometre hole opened in the Allied lines that the Germans quickly exploited, taking Kitcheners' Wood; before the Canadian soldiers were able to close the breach.

In the Third Battle of Ypres, the Canadian and ANZAC troops took the village of Passchendaele.

In The Trenches

On the 1st July 1916, the British Army endured the bloodiest day in its history, suffering 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead, during the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Most of the casualties occurred in the first hour of the attack. The entire Somme offensive cost the British Army almost half a million men.

Neither side proved able to deliver a decisive blow for the next two years, though protracted German action at Verdun throughout 1916, combined with the bloodletting at the Somme, brought the exhausted French army to the brink of collapse.

Futile attempts at frontal assault came at a high price for both the British and the French infantry, and led to widespread mutinies, especially during the Nivelle Offensive.

A French assault on German positions at Champagne, France, 1917. Throughout 1915–17, the British Empire and France suffered more casualties than Germany, because of both the strategic and tactical stances chosen by the sides.

Strategically, while the Germans only mounted a single main offensive at Verdun, the Allies made several attempts to break through German lines.

Tactically, German commander Erich Ludendorff's doctrine of "elastic defence" was well suited for trench warfare. This defence had a lightly defended forward position and a more powerful main position farther back beyond artillery range, from which an immediate and powerful counter-offensive could be launched.

Ludendorff Wrote On The Fighting In 1917

The 25th of August, concluded the second phase of the Flanders battle. It had cost us heavily. The costly August battles in Flanders and at Verdun imposed a heavy strain on the Western troops. In spite of all the concrete protection they seemed more or less powerless under the enormous weight of the enemy’s artillery.

At some points they no longer displayed the firmness which I, in common with the local commanders, had hoped for. The enemy managed to adapt himself to our method of employing counter attacks.

I myself was being put to a terrible strain. The state of affairs in the West appeared to prevent the execution of our plans elsewhere. Our wastage had been so high as to cause grave misgivings, and had exceeded all expectation.

On the battle of the Menin Road Ridge, Ludendorff also wrote,

Another terrific assault was made on our lines on the 20th September. The enemy’s onslaught on the 20th was successful, which proved the superiority of the attack over the defence.

Its strength did not consist in the tanks; we found them inconvenient, but put them out of action all the same. The power of the attack lay in the artillery, and in the fact that ours did not do enough damage to the hostile infantry as they were assembling, and above all, at the actual time of the assault.

Officers and senior enlisted men of the Bermuda Militia Artillery's Bermuda Contingent, Royal Garrison Artillery, in Europe. Around 1.1 to 1.2 million soldiers from the British and Dominion armies were on the Western Front at any one time.

A thousand battalions, occupying sectors of the line from the North Sea to the Orne River, operated on a month-long four-stage rotation system, unless an offensive was underway. The front contained over 9,600 kilometres of trenches.

Each battalion held its sector for about a week before moving back to the support lines and then further back to the reserve lines before a week out-of-line, often in the Poperinge or Amiens areas.

In the 1917 Battle of Arras, the only significant British military success was the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps under Sir Arthur Currie and Julian Byng.

The assaulting troops could, for the first time, overrun, rapidly reinforce and hold the ridge defending the coal-rich Douai plain.

The Naval World War I

At the start of the war, the German Empire had naval cruisers scattered across the globe, some of which were subsequently used to attack Allied merchant shipping.

The British Royal Navy systematically hunted them down, though not without some embarrassment from its inability to protect Allied shipping.

For example, the German detached light cruiser "S.M.S. Emden" part of the East-Asia squadron stationed at Tsingtao. They seized or destroyed 15 merchantmen, as well as sinking a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer.

However, most of the German East-Asia squadron—consisting of the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, light cruisers Nürnberg and Leipzig and two transport ships—did not have orders to raid shipping. The Squadron was underway to Germany when it met a bigger squadron of British warships.

The German flotilla and Dresden sank two armoured cruisers at the 'Battle of Coronel' but was almost destroyed at the 'Battle of the Falkland Islands' in December 1914, with only Dresden and a few auxiliaries escaping, but at the 'Battle of Más a Tierra' these two ships were destroyed or interned.

A battleship squadron of the Hochseeflotte at seaSoon after the outbreak of hostilities, Britain began a naval blockade of Germany. The strategy proved effective, cutting off vital military and civilian supplies, although this blockade violated accepted international law codified by several international agreements of the past two centuries.

Britain mined international waters to prevent any ships from entering entire sections of ocean, causing danger to even neutral ships. Since there was limited response to this tactic, Germany expected a similar response to its unrestricted submarine warfare.

Largest Naval Gun Battle Ever

In 1916, the 'Battle of Jutland' developed into the largest naval battle of the war, the only full-scale clash of battleships during the war. This battle was noted for its use of mainly big guns and was one of the largest gun battles in history.

It took place on 31st May to 1st June 1916, in the North Sea off Jutland. The Kaiserliche Marine's High Seas Fleet, commanded by Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, squared off against the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, led by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe.

The engagement was a stand off, as the Germans, outmanoeuvred by the larger British fleet, managed to escape and Strategically, the British asserted their control of the sea, and the bulk of the German surface fleet remained confined to port for the duration of the war.

Submarines attempted to cut the supply lines between North America and Britain. The nature of submarine warfare meant that attacks often came without warning, giving the crews of the merchant ships little hope of survival.

The United States launched a protest, and Germany changed its rules of engagement. After the notorious sinking of the passenger ship "R.M.S. Lusitania" in 1915, Germany promised not to target passenger liners, while Britain armed its merchant ships, placing them beyond the protection of the "cruiser rules" which demanded warning and placing crews in "a place of safety" (a standard which the lifeboats did not meet).

Finally, in early 1917 Germany adopted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, realising the Americans would eventually enter the war. Germany sought to strangle Allied sea lanes before the U.S. could transport a large army overseas, but they could maintain only five long-range U-boats on station, to limited effect.

The U-boat threat lessened in 1917, when merchant ships began travelling in convoys, escorted by destroyers. This tactic made it difficult for U-boats to find targets, which significantly lessened losses; especially after the hydrophone and depth charges were introduced.

Accompanying destroyers would attack a submerged submarine with some hope of success. Convoys slowed the flow of supplies, since ships had to wait as the convoys were assembled.

The solution to the delays was an extensive program to build new freighters. Troopships were too fast for the submarines and did not travel the North Atlantic in convoys. German U-boats sunk more than 5,000 Allied ships, at a cost of 199 submarines.

World War I also saw the first use of aircraft carriers in combat, with "H.M.S. Furious" launching Sopwith Camels in a successful raid against the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in July 1918. They were also used for searching the seas doing anti-submarine patrols.

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